Suspect in Bar Attack Hinted of Violence in Note, Officials Say

By PAM BELLUCK; Katie Zezima contributed reporting from Boston for this article, and Steve Barnes from Little Rock, Ark.

Published: February 7, 2006

The note was short, scrawled by hand and not very detailed. But to investigators in New Bedford, Mass., where 18-year-old Jacob D. Robida used a hatchet and a gun to attack three patrons in a gay bar last Thursday, the note Mr. Robida apparently wrote that same night was a portent that there was more violence to come.

''It was the note of a desperate and disturbed young man,'' said Paul F. Walsh Jr., the district attorney of Bristol County, which includes New Bedford. ''It said something like, 'I love you Mom,' that kind of stuff. 'I'm leaving.' But the intriguing part was something like: 'I'm going and if I have to go out in something akin to a blaze of glory, then so be it.' ''

Investigators found the note in Mr. Robida's house on Friday, Mr. Walsh said, and from then on were concerned about what he would do.

''My gut early on, in kicking it around with the investigators, was that he will go down in a blaze of bullets, that this is a suicidal rampage, and our fear was that he would kill five cops,'' Mr. Walsh said.

On Saturday afternoon in Gassville, Ark., Mr. Robida killed a police officer, Jim Sell, 63, who had stopped him for a traffic violation. The police chased him for about 20 miles and he crashed to a stop in Norfork, Ark. Then, the police say, he shot and killed a 33-year-old former girlfriend from West Virginia, Jennifer Rena Bailey, whom he had picked up after leaving Massachusetts.

After killing Ms. Bailey, Mr. Robida shot at the police, who returned fire, wounding him with two bullets to the head. He died early Sunday morning at a Missouri hospital.

On Monday, investigators from Arkansas, West Virginia, Massachusetts and Kentucky, where Mr. Robida apparently swapped his license plate for a Kentucky one, were trying to decipher Mr. Robida's motive and piece together his actions of the last few days.

''There's got to be something that triggered that rage,'' said Mr. Walsh, who said that investigators were interviewing friends and relatives and analyzing Mr. Robida's computer, trying to figure out what caused his actions and how he got the Ruger handgun that he could not have legally possessed in Massachusetts before he was 21.

''This kid's awful young to be that hateful,'' he said.

Mr. Walsh said that Mr. Robida, a high school dropout, had previously had ''a couple of problems, nothing major,'' including one minor assault that landed him in a junior police academy for unruly teenagers.

A police search of his bedroom found three Nazi flags, a stop sign with racist words written on it, books about Hitler and other racist and anti-Semitic writings, according to a police report released Monday. Mr. Walsh said there was ''no suggestion that he was antigay.''

There was also a homemade coffin, a sword, a knife and 85 rounds of ammunition. There were two bumper stickers, one of which said ''My day is not complete until I've terrified a complete stranger.''

Mr. Robida had a Web site on MySpace.com, on which he called himself Jake Jekyll and made numerous references to violence. The Web site said that his favorite ''murder weapon'' was a hatchet and that the people he would like to meet included ''serial killers, murderers.''

Ms. Bailey, a mother of three from Charleston who had a Goth-inspired Web site of her own on MySpace.com called BarbiesNightmare, apparently met Mr. Robida online, said Sgt. C. J. Ellyson of the West Virginia State Police. He said that from January 2004 to about March 2005, Mr. Robida lived with Ms. Bailey and the only child she had custody of, her youngest, who is now 4.

Sergeant Ellyson said that the two broke up last year and that the police had not found evidence of them being in contact since. He said that Ms. Bailey had been spending the weekend with all three of her children, and that it appeared that when Mr. Robida came to her house, she dropped the children at her mother's house and went with him.

Mr. Walsh said that Mr. Robida's mother, who lived with him in New Bedford, appeared to have no idea of the violent and hate-filled path her son was on, even when he stopped home to say goodbye after the bar attack, his head bleeding. ''She's partially blind, a severe diabetic, and she is in a wheelchair,'' Mr. Walsh said. ''I don't know that she's ever been up to that room of his.''

He said that Mr. Robida's father, who did not live with him, hired his son occasionally to work for his construction company and had paid him $300 for such work the week before the rampage. Mr. Walsh said that Mr. Robida was traveling with no credit cards, bank cards or cellphone and made no calls after he fled.

Although the part of Arkansas he ended up in is home to white supremacist groups, the leader of one group, Billy Roper Jr. of White Revolution, said his group had never heard of Mr. Robida. Mr. Walsh said he doubted that Mr. Robida was hoping to meet up with such groups.

''With this level of rage, it doesn't seem to be very well planned,'' Mr. Walsh said. ''This is a lone, desperate kid.''